Desiree

by Annemarie Selinko

  His carriage, an open one, was standing outside. We drove through a spring evening filled with the scent of lime blossom. When we got nearer to the heart of the city its lights sparkled so brightly that we couldn’t see the stars any more.

  All the time we hadn’t spoken a word. As we were rolling along the bank of the Seine Bernadotte called to the coachman, and the carriage stopped close to a bridge.

  ‘That’s the bridge. Remember it?’ said Bernadotte.

  We got out, went side by side to the middle of the bridge and leant over the edge. The thousand lights of Paris were dancing up and down on the waves of the river.

  ‘I went several times to the Rue du Bac and asked after you. But the people there didn’t want to tell me anything about you!’

  ‘Yes, they knew that at that time I was here secretly and without permission,’ I said.

  We went back to the carriage, and he put his arm round my shoulders. My head just came up to his epaulettes.

  ‘You told me that night that you were far too small for me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and now I am smaller still! I was wearing shoes with high heels then and they’re quite out of fashion now. But perhaps that doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Perhaps what doesn’t matter?’

  ‘That I am so little.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter at all. Just the opposite!’

  ‘How do you mean “just the opposite”?’

  ‘I like it.’

  On the journey back I pressed my cheek against his shoulder. But the epaulettes scratched rather a lot.

  ‘This awful gold stuff bothers me,’ I murmured crossly.

  He laughed. ‘Yes, I know, you don’t like Generals.’

  It struck me all of a sudden that he was the fifth General who had proposed to me. Napoleon, Junot, Marmont, Duphot: I decided to forget about them. I preferred to have my cheek scratched by the epaulettes of the fifth, named Bernadotte.

  When we arrived back we found that all the guests had gone meanwhile and there were only Julie and Joseph left.

  ‘I hope you’ll come to see us here often, General,’ said Joseph.

  ‘Daily—’ I said, and stopped. Then, resolutely, I went on and brought out his name for the first time: ‘Daily, won’t you, Jean-Baptiste?’

  ‘We have decided to get married very soon. You won’t raise any objection?’ Bernadotte asked Joseph.

  Of course, we hadn’t talked about the wedding at all. But as far as I was concerned I would have married him then and there.

  ‘I shall start to-morrow looking for a pleasant little house,’ Bernadotte continued, ‘and as soon as I have found one to our liking we’ll get married.’

  Something he had said and I remembered ran like a sweet little tune through my mind: ‘For years I have saved up part of my salary, I could buy a little house for you and the child.’

  ‘I shall write to Mama at once,’ I heard Julie say. And Joseph added, ‘Good night, brother-in-law, good night. Napoleon will be very pleased about the news.’

  As soon as Bernadotte had gone Joseph exclaimed at once: ‘I don’t understand this at all. Bernadotte is certainly no man of rash decisions!’

  ‘Isn’t he a bit too old for Désirée? He’s at least—’

  ‘In the middle thirties, I should say,’ Joseph estimated. Turning to me he said, ‘Tell me, Désirée, do you realise that you are going to marry one of the most important men in the Republic?’

  ‘The trousseau!’ Julie cried. ‘What about the trousseau? If Désirée is really going to get married soon we’ll have to do something about the trousseau.’

  ‘We don’t want this man Bernadotte to say that the sister-in-law of a Bonaparte was married without a first-class trousseau,’ Joseph said, and looked at us solemnly. ‘How long will it take you to get everything ready?’

  ‘As far as the shopping part of it goes, that’s quickly done,’ said Julie. ‘But the initials have to be embroidered on the linen.’

  At that point I intervened in the excited talk: ‘But the trousseau is all ready in Marseilles. All we need do is to send word to have it despatched here. And the initials are all on.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ cried Julie, with eyes as round as saucers for sheer surprise, ‘Désirée is right, the initials are all on, B—’

  ‘Yes,’ I smiled, going to the door, ‘B, B, and nothing but B!’

  ‘The whole thing seems very peculiar to me,’ murmured Joseph with suspicion in his voice.

  ‘If only she’s going to be happy!’ Julie said softly.

  Happy, happy, oh how happy I am! Let me tell it to all the world, you, God in Heaven, you, lime trees in the street, you, roses in the vase, how happy I am!

  PART 2

  The Wife of

  Marshal Bernadotte

  Sceaux near Paris, Autumn of the Year VI (1798)

  I was married to General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte on the 30th of Thermidor in the Year VI of the Republic at seven o’clock in the evening at the registry office in Sceaux, a suburb of Paris. My husband’s witnesses were his friend Antoine Morien, a Captain in the cavalry, and the Recorder of Sceaux, Monsieur François Desgranges. I for my part had no option but to ask Uncle Somis, who, as a matter of principle, never misses a family wedding, and, of course, Joseph to be my witnesses. At the last moment Lucien Bonaparte turned up at the registry office, so that I appeared with three witnesses in tow.

  After the ceremony we all went to the Rue du Rocher, where Julie had prepared a magnificent feast. (I should add that everything went according to plan, but it had cost Julie three sleepless nights!) So as not to offend anybody, Joseph had asked all the Bonapartes living in or near Paris. Madame Letitia repeatedly expressed her regret that her stepbrother Fesch, who had returned to his priestly office, had been prevented from coming. At first Mama had intended to come from Genoa for the wedding. But she had been ailing a lot lately, and therefore the journey was considered too strenuous for her in the summer heat. As for Jean-Baptiste, he hates all kinds of family festivities, and as he has no relatives in Paris he only brought his old friend Morien along. My wedding therefore was completely dominated by the Bonapartes, for whom Uncle Somis, a slow, comfortable provincial, is no match. To my astonishment Joseph had asked at the last minute General Junot and his wife Laura, the daughter of a Corsican friend of Madame Letitia’s whom he had married at Napoleon’s wish. Junot, a member of Napoleon’s staff, was in Paris for a short time to report to the Government on Napoleon’s entry into Alexandria and Cairo and his victory at the Battle of the Nile.

  I felt dreadfully bored during the wedding breakfast. It began very late. The late evening hours are the fashionable time now for getting married, and therefore Joseph had arranged for the ceremony to take place at seven o’clock. That made everything else late. Julie had wanted me to stay in bed the whole day before going to the registry office so that I should look as rested and as pretty as possible. But I had no time for that. I had to help Marie put away our cutlery, which we had only bought the day before. Besides there’s always so much to do when one furnishes a house.

  Only two days after Jean-Baptiste and I had become engaged he turned up to say that he had found a suitable house. I had to go there that very moment to look at it. It is a small house in the Rue de la Lune in Sceaux, 3, Rue de la Lune, to be exact. On the ground floor we have the kitchen, the dining-room and a small closet in which Jean-Baptiste put a writing desk and piles of books. Every day he comes along with more books and we have called the closet ‘the study’. On the upper floor there are only a beautiful bedroom and a tiny chamber. Then there are two small offices, bedrooms for Marie and Fernand. Marie was imported into our ménage by me, Fernand by Jean-Baptiste.

  Marie and Fernand quarrel all day long. Mama had wanted to take Marie with her when she moved to Genoa, but Marie refused. She didn’t tell Mama what she was going to do but simply took a room in Marseilles and worked as a cook at family celebrations of people who were proud to have ‘the
former cook of Madame Clary’ working for them. But I knew that, although she had never said so in so many words, she was simply waiting. The day after my engagement I wrote her a short note: ‘I am engaged to General B. of the bridge of which I once told you. As soon as he’s found a suitable house we shall get married, and if I know him he’ll find the house in twenty-four hours. When can you come?’ I never had an answer to that letter. But a week later Marie arrived in Paris.

  ‘I only hope Marie will get on with my Fernand,’ said Jean-Baptiste.

  ‘Who is your Fernand?’ I asked, startled.

  It came out then that Fernand came from Jean-Baptiste’s home town, Pau in Gascony, went to school with him and joined up at the same time. But whereas Jean-Baptiste was being promoted all the time, Fernand only just escaped being thrown out of the Army scores of times. Fernand is small and fat, his feet hurt him when the Army starts marching, and his stomach aches horribly when the battle begins. It isn’t his fault, of course, but it’s very disagreeable for him. All the same he wanted to stay in the Army to be near Jean-Baptiste. He has a passion for polishing boots and knows how to remove the most persistent grease stains from tunics. Two years ago he was given an honourable discharge from the Army so that he could devote himself entirely to the boots and stains and the creature comforts of Jean-Baptiste. When he was introduced to me he defined himself as ‘the servant of my General and schoolmate of Bernadotte’.

  As soon as Marie and Fernand set eyes on each other they started quarrelling. What about? About Fernand stealing from the larder and about Marie using his twenty-four shoe brushes and wanting to wash the General’s underclothes without asking his, Fernand’s, permission, and so on …

  When I saw our little house for the first time I said to Jean-Baptiste, ‘I shall write to Etienne to pay over my marriage portion to you.’

  Jean-Baptiste sniffed contemptuously: ‘What do you take me for? Do you think that I am going to build our home with my wife’s money?’

  ‘But, Joseph—’

  ‘I must ask you not to compare me with the Bonapartes,’ he said sharply. Then he took me laughingly by the shoulders and said, ‘My little one, all Bernadotte can buy you to-day is a doll’s house in Sceaux. But if ever you feel like wanting a mansion—’

  At that I nearly screamed: ‘For heaven’s sake, anything but that! Promise me that we are never, never going to live in a mansion, please!’

  I remembered with horror those long months in the Italian palazzi, and the thought came to me that people were speaking of Bernadotte as one of ‘the coming men’. His epaulettes looked ominous to me. ‘Promise me,’ I implored him, ‘never a mansion, never!’

  He gazed at me. His smile faded slowly from his face. ‘We belong together, Désirée,’ he said. ‘In Vienna I lived in a splendid palace. But to-morrow I may be ordered to the front and then I shall have nothing but a camp bed in the open. And the day after my headquarters may be moved to a castle, and if I asked you to join me there, would you refuse?’

  We were standing under the big chestnut tree in our future garden. ‘Soon we’ll be married,’ I thought, ‘and I shall try to be a good wife and to keep everything beautiful and in apple-pie order. That’s what I want, this tiny house with the chestnut tree and the overgrown flower beds.’ But then the thought of what I wanted was followed by the ghastly images of high-ceilinged rooms, marble tiles and lackeys always getting in the way.

  ‘We shall be very happy here,’ I said in a murmur.

  But he was insistent. ‘Would you refuse?’ he repeated.

  I nestled up to him. ‘I shan’t refuse,’ I said, ‘but I shan’t be very happy in a castle.’

  When I was kneeling in front of the kitchen cupboard on the morning of my wedding day putting away the white china, Marie asked, ‘Aren’t you excited, Eugenie?’ A few hours later, when Julie’s maid was trying to coax my obstinate hair into Josephine’s babyish curls, Julie remarked, ‘Strange, I do believe, darling, you are not at all excited.’

  I shook my head. Excited? Why should I be excited? Since that fateful moment in the dark cab, when Jean-Baptiste’s hand was the only bit of warmth left in my life, I have always known that I belonged to him. In a few hours’ time I should put my signature on a piece of paper in Sceaux Registry Office and with that confirm what I have been certain of for so long. No, I wasn’t excited at all.

  After the ceremony we had the wedding breakfast, which, as I said before, was such a boring affair. Most of the talk, apart from Uncle Somis’ toast to the bridal couple and some revolutionary oratory from Lucien, was about Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. Jean-Baptiste was heartily tired of this subject, but Joseph and Lucien had taken it into their heads to try to convince him that the conquest of Egypt was one more proof of Napoleon’s genius.

  ‘I think it out of the question,’ said Jean-Baptiste, ‘that we can hold Egypt permanently. And the British know it and so they don’t bother to engage in a colonial war with us.’

  ‘But,’ Joseph put in, ‘Napoleon has taken Alexandria and Cairo already and won the Battle of the Nile.’

  ‘That won’t disturb the British greatly; properly speaking, Egypt is not under British but under Turkish suzerainty anyway, and the British consider our troops as no more than a passing inconvenience—’

  ‘At the Battle of the Nile the enemy suffered twenty thousand killed, we not even fifty,’ interrupted Junot.

  ‘Magnificent,’ added Joseph.

  Jean-Baptiste shrugged his shoulders. ‘Magnificent? The glorious French Army under the leadership of its inspired General Bonaparte and with the help of modern heavy artillery killed twenty thousand half-naked Africans who hadn’t even boots on their feet. Really, I must say, a magnificent victory of the gun over the bow and arrow!’

  Lucien opened his mouth to say something, but then hesitated. He looked sad when he said at last, ‘Killed, in the name of the Rights of Man.’

  ‘The end justifies the means,’ said Joseph. ‘Napoleon will carry his conquests farther and drive the British out of the Mediterranean region.’

  ‘They wouldn’t dream of challenging us on land,’ declared Jean-Baptiste. ‘Why should they? They have their fleet, and not even you will deny that it is far superior to our own Navy. The moment they destroy the ships which carried Bonaparte’s Army across the sea—’Jean-Baptiste broke off and looked at each of us in turn. ‘Don’t you see what is at stake? Any moment now a French Army may find itself cut off from its base. And then your brother with all his victorious regiments will be caught in the desert like a mouse in a trap. The Egyptian campaign is an insane game of poker and the stake is far too high for our Republic.’

  I knew that Joseph and Junot were going to write to Napoleon that very night that my husband had called him a poker player. What I did not know, however, nor anybody else in Paris for that matter, was the fact that sixteen days before, the British under the command of a certain Admiral Nelson had attacked the whole French fleet in the Bay of Aboukir and almost completely wiped it out. Further, since that day Napoleon had been trying desperately to establish contact with France, failing which he saw that his soldiers and himself would be bound to perish in the burning desert sands. No, nobody could possibly know that on my wedding day Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte foretold exactly what had in fact already happened.

  At this stage of the discussion I couldn’t help yawning, which is not a very decorous thing for a bride to do. But then, I was getting married for the first time in my life and didn’t really know how to behave. Jean-Baptiste noticed it, rose and said:

  ‘It’s late, Désirée. I think we ought to go home.’

  There it was, for the first time, this so personal phrase, ‘We ought to go home’ …

  At the bottom end of the table Caroline and Hortense looked at each other darkly and started to giggle. My comfortable Uncle Somis winked at me and patted me as I was saying good-bye to him. ‘Don’t be afraid, little one,’ he said, ‘Bernadotte won’t eat you.’


  We drove in the open carriage to Sceaux through a sultry late summer’s night. The stars and a round yellow moon seemed to be within arm’s reach, and I felt that it might be no accident that our house stood in the Rue de la Lune, Moon Street.

  When we entered the house we saw the dining-room brightly lit. Tall candles were burning in the silver candelabra, a present from Josephine and Napoleon. On the table we found a bottle of champagne and glasses and a bowl full of grapes, peaches and marzipan cakes. But the house was silent and there was not a soul to be seen.

  ‘That’s Marie’s work,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘No,’ said Jean-Baptiste, ‘Fernand’s!’

  ‘But I know Marie’s marzipan cakes,’ I said, and ate one.

  Jean-Baptiste regarded the bottle thoughtfully. ‘If we drink any more to-night,’ he said, ‘we’ll have a dreadful headache tomorrow morning.’

  I agreed and went to open the glass door leading out into the garden. The scent of roses hung in the air and the chestnut leaves glittered silvery at the edges. Behind me Jean-Baptiste extinguished the candles one by one.

  Our bedroom was quite dark. I felt my way to the window and drew back the curtains to let the moonlight in. Jean-Baptiste meanwhile had gone into the little room next to the bedroom and I heard him rummaging for something. Perhaps he wanted to give me time to undress and go to bed, I thought, and felt grateful to him for his consideration. I undressed quickly, went to the wide double bed, found my nightdress spread out on the silk cover, put it on, slipped quickly under the blanket – and screamed at the top of my voice.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Désirée, what is it?’ Jean-Baptiste was standing by the bed.

  ‘I don’t know. Something pricked me horribly.’ I moved. ‘Ow, ow, there it is again!’

  Jean-Baptiste lit a candle, and I sat up and threw the blanket back: roses! Roses, roses with prickly thorns!

  ‘What idiot—?’ Jean-Baptiste started shouting, and then stopped as we stared at the rose-strewn bed in confusion.